The Coalition is music to Cameron Mackintosh's ears

Sir Cameron Mackintosh is to stage The Coalition - the Musical by Olaf
Dyliparos

Sir Cameron Mackintosh is to stage The Coalition - the Musical by Olaf Dyliparos Photo: Rex Features

By Tim Walker

7:30AM BST 01 Apr 2013

Sir Cameron Mackintosh believes that it has the potential to be his biggest hit since Les Misérables – and certainly the story it will relate is likely to be every bit as soaked in blood and tears.

The Coalition – the Musical had originally been conceived by the German composer and lyricist Olaf Dyliparos as a “modest chamber piece” for this summer’s Edinburgh Festival, but Sir Cameron, a one-time Labour Party donor who came out for David Cameron at the last election, has persuaded him to re-work it as a major West End musical.

“It focuses very much on the relationship between David Cameron and Nick Clegg and it has a big, operatic feel to it – I mean, it’s a sort of love story that’s gone wrong,” Dyliparos tells me. “There are so many elements to the story that intrigue me: the fact these guys look and sound so alike, that they are both great performers, and yet there are these tensions they have to deal with in terms of their class, and trying to keep the people in their different camps happy. On one level, it is very funny, but there are tragic elements to it, too.”

He adds that he doesn’t see that modern politics should be off-limits as entertainment. “John Adams’s Nixon in China comes to mind in this regard,” he says. “The plan is to open this Autumn, and, obviously, the problem I have is keeping the piece up to date, as clearly this is a story that is far from over.”

John Caird, who collaborated with Sir Cameron on Les Misérables is, I am told, “in the frame” to direct, and there is talk, too, of Rufus Wright, who is currently playing Cameron in The Audience, reprising the role in The Coalition – The Musical. Sir Cameron ideally wants the protagonists played by men with proven backgrounds as musical stars.

Jan Leeming, left, was among the motley throng that attended Justin Welby’s enthronement as Archbishop of Canterbury.

“It was a memorable, touching and awe-inspiring occasion,” says the five-times-married 71-year-old former BBC newsreader.

She is, however, unlikely to endear herself to the Prince of Wales with her recollections of him on the big day. “There were some interesting moments which

I did manage to catch by craning my neck around and looking at the monitor immediately above me,” she says.

“I’m not sure if Prince Charles was deep in contemplation, but, at one moment, he looked as though he had nodded off.”

America is not Bridey’s cup of tea

A good cup of tea is always impossible to obtain overseas, but Simon Jones, who appeared in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and as “Bridey” in Brideshead Revisited, has found a way of resolving the problem.

He admits to taking “extra strong” tea from M&S with him. “I bring it over in such quantities you would wonder, when they X-rayed the suitcases, that I would look like the most professional, competent drug dealer with all these silver sachets lining my bags. Why they don’t actually stop me, I do not know.”

Of tea served in America, he adds: “They don’t have a clue. First of all, they think tea bags are a very good thing. I think they are as long as you know what went in them. They put a tea bag in a cup of lukewarm water and say 'get on with it.’”

Jones has also, funnily enough, narrated Douglas Adams’s book, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. A discerning tea drinker would, I fancy, have taken Earl Grey, sourced either from Williamson or Ahmad Tea of London.

Highly a-llama-ing

Michael Fabricant may once have had to put up with some unkind teasing about his unlikely hair-do from Matthew Parris, but the Tory MP was still happy to spend some time with his waspish erstwhile colleague at his country home.

“I had a nasty experience with a snowy white llama called Darren, which Matthew owns,” Fabricant recalls.